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CHA Announces 2010 Anaheim Attendance Numbers

The Craft & Hobby Association has announced attendance figures for the January consumer and trade shows in Anaheim, and the organization described the numbers as “positive” in its release.

Despite the near catastrophic rain in California that week, the CHA Craft Supershow attracted 8,044 attendees on the Friday & Saturday preceding the trade event. 3,500 of those tickets had been pre-sold. Attendees came to the Supershow from 36 different states and 22 different countries. The Supershow presented consumers with 41,288 sq. ft. of display space.

“The response to our inaugural SuperShow in Anaheim demonstrates that we can be successful at growing the industry by introducing consumers to different crafts,” explained Steve Berger, President and CEO, CHA.. “We believe the SuperShow will continue to grow as more and more consumers experience a broader variety of crafts first-hand, and then share what they learn with their friends and family.”

The CHA Winter 2010 trade show gathered 6,700 buyers and business networking attendees. This was a 5% increase over 2010 according to CHA. [CHA did not release counts of exhibitors or exhibitor staff for the 2010 Winter show.] One major area of growth at the show was in the new exhibitor section. The show’s count of 100 new exhibitors was a 40% increase over 2009, perhaps reflecting increased optimism about the economy from businesses and entrepreneurs.

“The CHA Winter Show continues to perform well even in a challenging economy,” said Berger. “The fact that we had nearly a 5% increase in attendees and over 100 new exhibitors is a positive indicator of the strength of the industry and the CHA Winter Show.”

The trade show featured 185,250 sq. ft. of exhibit space, a decrease of almost 19% from 2009’s size of 228,056 sq. ft.

CHA Summer 2010 will return to Rosemont, Illinois and the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center from July 27th-29th, 2010, followed by the CHA Craft SuperShow on July 30th and 31st, 2010.

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About Nancy Nally

Nancy Nally is the owner of Nally Studios LLC., and the Publisher & Editor of ScrapbookUpdate.com and CraftCritique.com.
Nancy also served as the “Modern Business” columnist for Northridge Publishing’s Creative Retailer magazine for several years, before becoming the magazine’s editor from 2013 until its closure in 2014. Her writing has also appeared in CLN Online and CHA's Craft Industry Today.
In addition to writing, Nancy is also an experienced speaker and presenter, having given business seminars at many recent Craft & Hobby Association trade shows. From 2011 until 2012, she was the founding co-host of the Paperclipping Roundtable podcast, and she can also be seen on five episodes from the second and third seasons of the PBS television series Scrapbook Soup.
Nancy also does freelance public relations work and consulting for private companies about the scrapbook industry’s trends and business climate.

One Response to CHA Announces 2010 Anaheim Attendance Numbers

This is a brazen lie. There was no where near the 8k people in Anaheim that their press release announced. You can see from one end of the building to the other by 2:00pm friday and Saturday was mildly different. The event was about 1/5 the size of a scrapbook expo and was so poorly marketed and put together that they’ll get half the exhibitors next year. People came looking for the latest CHA items. Forget it, except for Unity, everything was on clearance in anticipation for CHA. They were treated to a rummage sale.